Authors: Nancy Krulik
No Bones About It (4 page)
A report was a small price to pay for all that.
Chapter 6
Katie went out into the hall. She looked for a guard who could show her where the library was. But there was no one in the hallway.
Suddenly, she felt a small draft on the back of her neck. That was weird. There were no windows anywhere near her.
The draft became a breeze. Then the breeze grew stronger. Katie looked for an open window. All of the windows were shut. The breeze couldn’t be coming from there, either.
Katie gulped. This wasn’t any ordinary wind. This was the magic wind!
Whoosh!
The magic wind picked up speed. It swirled wildly around Katie. She shut her eyes tightly and tried not to cry. The wind was big, powerful, and out of control. Katie was really scared!
The magic wind picked up speed. It swirled wildly around Katie. She shut her eyes tightly and tried not to cry. The wind was big, powerful, and out of control. Katie was really scared!
But she was even more scared when the wind
stopped
blowing. She knew what that meant. The magic wind was gone . . .
stopped
blowing. She knew what that meant. The magic wind was gone . . .
And so was Katie Carew.
Chapter 7
Katie slowly opened her eyes and looked around. She wasn’t in the hall anymore. The magic wind had blown her into the Hall of Dinosaurs. Everywhere Katie looked, she saw huge, prehistoric skeletons.
Okay, so now she knew where she was. But she still didn’t know
who
she was.
who
she was.
Mandy looked up at Katie. “Was the Stegosaurus a plant-eater or a meat-eater?” she asked.
“Huh?” Katie replied.
“What did the Stegosaurus eat?” Mandy asked again.
“Um . . . let me think about that for a moment,” Katie answered.
“But you’re the Director of the Education Department. You should know all about this,” Mandy said disappointedly.
“Stegosaurus was a plant-eater,” Mrs. Derkman told her.
Katie didn’t hear Mrs. Derkman’s answer. She was too busy thinking about what Mandy had called her.
The Director of the Education Department?
Katie gulped. That was Mr. Weir’s title!
The Director of the Education Department?
Katie gulped. That was Mr. Weir’s title!
Katie looked down at her feet. Her purple sneakers were gone. In their place was a pair of worn, black loafers. She was also wearing gray slacks and a white sweat-stained, button-down shirt. There was a badge on a chain around her neck. Katie looked at the picture on the badge. It showed a skinny man with a tuft of hair on the top of his head.
Oh, no!
The magic wind had turned Katie into Mr. Weir!
“What kind of dinosaur is this?” Manny asked her. He was standing beside a huge, long-necked dinosaur skeleton.
Katie didn’t answer. She was too busy staring at the picture on her badge. Katie felt like she was going to cry. She didn’t want to be Mr. Weir. Not for one minute.
“Whoa, look at this tooth,” Jeremy called out from the other side of the room. He pointed to a huge, pointy fossil. “It’s as sharp as a knife.”
“I wouldn’t want to be his dentist,” Kevin said.
“That belonged to an Allosaurus,” Mrs. Derkman told the boys. “They were meat-eaters.” She turned to Katie. “Mr. Weir, I think maybe there are too many children here for you. It will be easier for you to answer questions from just a few.”
“Huh?” Katie murmured. She hadn’t been listening to Mrs. Derkman at all.
“Sometimes, it’s difficult for people who aren’t teachers to handle large groups of third-graders,” Mrs. Derkman replied. “So I’m going to take some of these children into the next room. You can handle the others.”
“No!” Katie shouted without thinking. She didn’t want to be in charge.
“Excuse me?” Mrs. Derkman said.
Katie sighed. She had forgotten she was supposed to be Mr. Weir. “I mean, no problem,” she corrected herself.
Mrs. Derkman took Jeremy, Becky, Zoe, and Manny into the next room. Everyone else stayed with Katie.
“Man, I can’t believe we got stuck with Mr. Weird,” Kevin whispered to Suzanne. “He hates kids.”
“Would you rather be with Mrs. Derkman?” Suzanne asked him.
Kevin sighed. “I’d rather be out on the playground,” he said.
Suzanne turned to Katie. “Mr. Weir,” she said. “I heard the dinosaurs were all beautiful colors, like birds. Is that true?”
Katie had no idea. So she gave a Mr. Weir kind of answer. “How should I know? I’m not old enough to have been around in the time of the dinosaurs.”
“I was just asking,” Suzanne muttered.
“Oh, look at this one,” Miriam pointed to a nest with a few eggs and some smaller dinosaur skeletons in it. “It’s a baby. What kind of dinosaur is this, Mr. Weir?”
“Not a very smart one,” Katie said.
“Huh?” Miriam asked.
“Any dinosaur that would have children would have to be foolish,” Katie explained.
“Oh, man, this stinks!” Kevin moaned as he read one of the signs.
“What does?” Suzanne asked him.
Kevin pointed to a sign next to one of the smaller dinosaurs. “It says here that none of the dinosaur skeletons in this room are real. They’re just models.”
“The real dinosaurs are probably in museums in the big cities,” Suzanne told him. “Just like the real mummies. Isn’t that right, Mr. Weir?”
Before Katie could answer, a loud shout came from the other side of the room.
“Yeehah! Ride ’em, cowboy!” someone yelled.
Katie turned around just in time to see George sitting on the back of a model of a huge meat-eating dinosaur!
“How did you get up there?” Kevin asked, impressed.
“I climbed up the tail,” George answered. He pointed to the trail of bones that led from the floor, straight up to the dinosaur’s head. “See, it’s like a ladder.”
“Cool. I want to try it next,” Kevin said.
This was getting out of hand. Katie couldn’t let the boys climb up and down on the dinosaurs. “George, get down from there right now!” she demanded.
“No way, Mr. Weird,” George answered. “A cowboy doesn’t get down till he’s thrown from the horse. Yeehah!” He pretended to swing an imaginary lasso.
“Please get down,” Katie tried again. “You’re going to get in trouble.”
“That won’t scare George,” Suzanne told her. “He’s always in trouble.”
Katie reached up and tried to grab George. But George was quicker—he leaped from the dinosaur’s back onto the floor. Then he ran off.
“George! Get back here!” Katie ordered. But George just kept on running. Katie followed him. Suzanne, Kevin, Mandy, and Miriam ran after Katie.
George darted into a large room. The sign on the door read “Not Open to the Public.” But George didn’t take the time to read the sign. He just ran right in.
Inside the room were two dinosaur models and all sorts of tools. This was the room where the museum’s scientists put together the model dinosaurs. But the scientists weren’t in there right now.
Unfortunately, George was.
“George! Get out!” Katie shouted as she followed him into the room.
Quickly, George climbed up the long tail of one of the dinosaurs. He sat on the dinosaur’s big head and stuck his tongue out.
That made Katie mad. She started to climb up the dinosaur’s tail after George. But the fake bones couldn’t hold the weight of a grown man. And that’s just what Katie was at the moment . . .
CRASH!
Chapter 8
The dinosaur’s tailbones collapsed to the floor like giant prehistoric dominoes. In seconds, Katie and George were sitting on the ground, surrounded by a pile of white plastic bones and wire.
“Oops,” George said sheepishly.
“Oops?” Katie cried out. “Is that all you can say? Look what you’ve done!”
“I didn’t do it. You did,” George said. He rubbed his bottom. “And how come you only care about the dinosaur? I hurt my tail, too.”
Katie didn’t care about George’s sore rear end. All she could think about was the pile of bones on the floor. Mr. Weir was going to be in big trouble. He might even lose his job! And it would all be Katie’s fault.
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